BISHOPSTONE,
BUCKS.
According
to a geological report on the chalk in this area, the coprolites were worked
about the year 1885 and ground evidence for the workings can be seen (O.S. GR.
80790966) just southeast of Bishopstone and 100m. northeast of Little Marsh
Farm. (Keeping,W.”Cretaceous Rocks of Great Britain,” Mem.Geol.Surv.vol.i,
1900,p277 et seq.; Strahan,Flitt and Denham, “Mineral Resources,”Mem.Geol.Surv.
1917 p20
The
coprolites must have been worked in the vicinity and the traces of ridge and furrow
suggests the lines of the coprolite trenches. Once raised the fossils were
transported to the washmill, which was a circular iron ring situated on the top
of a large earth mound, in this case about 80 x 30 x 1.5m. Into it the fossils
were dumped and water was either pumped or emptied in before a circular iron
harrow, hauled round the mound by a horse, would have stirred the fossils to
clean off the waste soil and clay. This slurry was then drained into a settling
bed built up over the duration of the diggings and surrounded by a bank. In
theory, once dried, it ought to have been replaced in the pits before the
topsoil of which the mound was made, was replaced and levelled. The fact that
it is still evident, suggests the contractor or farmer did not complete the
work as was normally the case. The most likely explanation is the industry fell
into decline in the late 1880‘s when foreign phosphate supplies caused the
bottom to fall out of the market causing the smaller coprolite contractors to
either go out of business or curtail their operations. Here it seems the latter
was the case.
Connected
to the washmill was a tramway which would have taken the washed fossils to the
road for transporting to the manure manufacturers, possibly Morris and
Griffin‘s in Wolverhampton as they had many coprolite workings in the Bucks.
area. (